Posts tagged “food”

Did you know?

Tempura is actually a Portuguese form of cooking. Introduced to Japan in the 1500’s by Jesuit Priests.

Today’s 5 facts about Tempura:

Tempura was considered a local delicacy in Nagasaki, Japan for well over 100 years.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, considered the first Shogun of Japan, reportedly loved tempura.

The word “tempura” comes from the word “tempora”, a Latin word meaning “times.”

Outside Japan there are many nontraditional uses of tempura. Chefs over the world include tempura dishes on their menus, and a wide variety of different batters and ingredients are used, including the nontraditional broccoli, zucchini, sliced sweet potatoes, and asparagus.

No Panko or Breadcrumbs are used in Tempura, as this method of using breadcrumbs is called Furai.

Today’s Food History

1618 Francis Bacon became Lord Chancellor of England.

1827 Sir Sanford Fleming was born. He devised the present system of time zones while working for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

1896 The ‘Fannie Farmer Cookbook’ was published.

1901 Alfred Packer is released from prison. He served 18 years for cannibalism after being stranded in the Rocky Mountains. (Actually he was convicted of murder, since cannibalism was not against the law).

1958 Ant Farms go on sale. Milton Levine had the idea at a July 4th family picnic. I wonder if he had dreams of fencing them in so they would not bother him at picnics?

A Boston cream pie is a cake that is filled with a custard or cream filling and frosted with chocolate.

Although it is called a Boston cream pie, it is in fact a cake, and not a pie.

Boston cream pie was created by Armenian-French chef M. Sanzian at Boston’s Parker House Hotel in 1856,

The Boston cream pie is the official dessert of Massachusetts, declared as such in 1996.

A Boston cream doughnut is a name for a Berliner filled with vanilla custard or crème pâtissière and topped with icing made from chocolate.

Today’s Food History

1752 Nicolas Appert was born. (The year is listed in various sources as 1749, 1750 and 1752; month and day also varies in October and November). Inventor of the canning process, preserving food by sealing it in sterilized containers. He published the results of 14 years of research in 1810 & received 12,000 franc award from French government.

Pennsylvania Dutch-style cheesecake uses a slightly tangy type of cheese with larger curds and less water content, called pot or farmer’s cheese.

Philadelphia-style cheesecake is lighter in texture, yet richer in flavor than New York style cheesecake.

Farmer’s cheese cheesecake is the contemporary implementation for the traditional use of baking to preserve fresh cheese and is often baked in a cake form along with fresh fruit like a tart.

Country-style cheesecake uses buttermilk to produce a firm texture while decreasing the pH (increasing acidity) to extend shelf life.

Lactose free cheesecake may be made either with lactose-free cream cheese or as an imitation using Vegan recipes combining non-dairy cream cheese alternatives with other lactose-free ingredient

Today’s Food History

1422 Charles VI of France died. It was during Charles VI rule that Taillevent was made Master of the King’s kitchens. Charles VI also gave sole rights for the aging of Roquefort cheese to the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, and all Roquefort must still be aged in the caves there today.

1449 George Plantagenet, duke of Clarence was born. Brother of Edward IV whom he was accused of plotting against. He was thrown into prison and secretly executed in the Tower of London. The rumor is that he was drowned in a butt (large cask) of malmsey wine.

1879 Thomas Edison demonstrated the first commercially practical light bulb at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

1990 Tom Carvel died. He was the inventor of the soft-serve ice cream machine, and founder of the Carvel ice cream chain.

Bisque is a smooth, creamy, highly seasoned soup of French origin, classically based on a strained broth of crustaceans.

It can be made from lobster, crab, shrimp or crayfish.

It is thought the name is derived from Biscay, as in Bay of Biscay, but the crustaceans are certainly bis cuites“twice cooked” (by analogy to abiscuit) for they are first sautéed lightly in their shells, then simmered in wine and aromatic ingredients, before being strained, followed by the addition of cream.

Bisque is a method of extracting every bit of flavor from imperfect crustaceans not good enough to send to market. In an authentic bisque, the shells are ground to a fine paste and added to thicken the soup.

Bisque is also sometimes used to refer to cream-based soups that do not contain seafood, in which the sometimes pre-cooked ingredients are pureed or processed in a food processor or a food mill.

Today’s Food History

1688 William Cheselden was born. An English surgeon and teacher, he was one of the first to describe the role of saliva in digestion.

1917 In France, Salvation Army volunteer Helen Purviance made the first doughnuts for homesick U.S. soldiers. The doughnuts became a symbol of the spirit of the Salvation Army’s work to ease the hardship of WW I soldiers on the frontline.

1937‘Woman’s Day’ magazine began publishing.

1962 Boxer Evander Holyfield was born. On June 28, 1997, Mike Tyson bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear in the 3rd round of a boxing match. Tyson was disqualified.

Cupcake liners do more than make it easy to remove them from the pan. Traditionally, sides of tins are greased for easy removal, but also floured because the batter needs to have something to cling to. A cupcake liner takes care of both.

On August 15, 2009 GourmetGiftBaskets.com broke the world record for largest cupcake ever made. The cupcake was 1,224 pounds, 4 foot tall by 10 foot wide, and had 2 million calories.

One of the most popular cupcake bakery’s in the U.S. is Crumbs in New York City. They have reported $23.5 million in cupcake revenue last year alone!

The first mention of a cupcake recipe goes as far back as 1796. Amelia Simms wrote a recipe in “American Cookery” which referenced, “a cake to be baked in small cups”.

However, it wasn’t until 1828 that the actual word cupcake was used by Eliza Leslie in her cookbook “Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats”.

The complete list of

Today’s Food History

1753 Jean Jacques Regis de Cambaceres was born. A French politician and gourmet. A gastronomic contemporary and rival of Talleyrand and Carême. The dinners he gave were famous, and Cambaceres closely supervised the food preparation. He refused to admit late-comers, and was also said to have demanded complete silence while dining.

1871 Charles Babbage died. He invented the adding machine, and among his other inventions is the cowcatcher, the V shaped front end on locomotives.

1878 Thomas Edison made electricity available for household usage.

1892 The first long distance telephone line between Chicago and New York City was put in service.

1919 William Waldorf Astor Born. William Waldorf Astor was a cousin of John Jacob Astor IV, the great grandson of John Jacob Astor. He built the Waldorf section (1893) of what would become the Waldorf Astoria (1897). The Empire State Building (1929) now stands on the site.

1931 Thomas Alva Edison, “the wizard of Menlo Park” died.

1945 James T. Ehler, Chef and food writer, was born.

1969 Cyclamate, a non-caloric sweetener, was banned. Discovered in 1937, and widely used in the food industry, cyclamate was found to cause cancer in laboratory rats. Cyclamate is still used in many countries around the world.